Edinburgh Dairies Limited


Company Number: SC001397
Date of Incorporation: 29 October 1884
Contact Details: 159 Glasgow Road, East Kilbride, G74 4PA
Operating Details: Active- Proposal to Strike off (company is a subsidiary of Wiseman Dairies, and its assets have been wholly absorbed into that organisation)
Other names (if known): Edinburgh & Dumfriesshire Dairies
Function of Company*: Operation dairies & cheese making (1551), non-trading Company (7499)
Headquarters/Base of Operations Location: Edinburgh, later Aberdeen then Glasgow
Area of Operation: East of Scotland

*Taken from Standard Industrial Classification 2003, as used by Companies House in 2010

Records


Held By: Wiseman Dairies

Scope/type: Extremely limited records (slim volume of receipts) going back to 1973. No company minutes.

Conditions governing access/use: Please contact Robert Wiseman Dairies at above address.

Related records: One photo of Edinburgh & Dumfriesshire Dairies at SCRAN http://www.scran.ac.uk/database/record.php?usi=000-000-035-575 . Court records for the same company are held in the NAS

Company History


This company appears to have been known as (or became part of) Edinburgh and Dumfries(shire) Dairies up until the 1970s, which was both a milk supplier and owner of a chain of shops in Edinburgh. According to Adam Gray in White Gold, Edinburgh in the late 1800s had more town dairies than Glasgow. However such was the demand for real milk that small operations could not keep up. By ‘importing’ milk from Dumfriesshire by train in the 1920s the company solved the shortage problem. The company grew throughout the first half of the century, to the point where in the 1930s it was reluctant to support the milk marketing board of Edinburgh as it had command of the milk market in the city. This company also delivered milk (on electric floats by the 1950s) and had its own chain of shops.

It appears that in 1973 this company was absorbed into Kennerty Dairies, an Aberdeen based dairy company, and its name changed to Edinburgh Dairies. Given that Kennerty’s operations were based on the East Coast of Scotland, it is likely that any business in the west or the south would have been sold on.

Kennerty was itself bought by Wiseman Dairies for £8.1 million in 1994. By this point Edinburgh had become a major processing centre for dairy products. Wiseman is currently looking to dissolve the company name as it is no longer in effective operation.